Quote:
Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash
Go back into your toolbar preferences > Toolbar when a device is connected:
Remove "manage collections" and replace it with "Create Kindle Collections". I believe "manage collections" is a Sony function.
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Uh-oh... That was it - thank you C. Watkins-Nash! I think the 1st post on this thread specifically said to pick the menu item 'manage collections' , at least when I started - maybe it's been changed now to be more clear. If not - hint, hint...
Since feedback on the plugin has been requested several times in this thread, I'll provide my experiences and the things I noted.
1. The plugin will only add books that are 'on device' to collections. So, if you have some books in your library that are not on the device, they won't end up in collections. That bit me because about 25% of my books, for whatever reason, were on the device, but Calibre didn't recognize them as 'on device'. I tried sending those books to the device, but it only made duplicates, and if I deleted one (the old one), Calibre said that they weren't on the device any more. I finally took a deep breath, crossed my fingers, and deleted ALL books from my device. I tried running the plugin and kept getting an error. After a few tests, I realized that the books MUST be on the device, not just in the library. Once I loaded all the books to the device, which took some time but went without incident, the error disappeared.
2. Once the issue in #1 was cleared, the plugin worked exactly as described. No problems whatsoever. I did end up with some books that were not in collections, but after thinking about it a bit, I determined that that was a function of incorrect metadata in the library, not the plugin. I deleted them and updated the metadata, then re-did the plugin. That corrected the problem. Sending all my books to the device 'as new' did have the unfortunate effect of wiping out my notes on when I read them (not a big deal, to me) and of removing my place in books that were still in progress. I wasn't happy about that, then realized that I could sync to last page read - which worked perfectly and only took a few minutes to mark the ones that I was still working on.
3. I had a custom 'Collection' column set up, and used that for the plugin. I used that column to mark the ORIGINAL collection the book was in, and used the '+' indicator for the Calibre catalog functon to mark books as read. I would have liked to point the plugin to the Collection column and somehow tell it that if there was a tag '+' to change the data in that column to Already Read. But I couldn't figure that out, and ended up adding 'Already Read' to my Collection column. I think it would be nice if the catalog and collection plugins could somehow be integrated. I didn't want collections built from tags (except for '+'), and I didn't want books listed in 2 collections (Already Read and the original genre collection).
To summarize, it took me a while to do the first run-through with the plugin, but once I got those glitches worked out, the plugin was great! I re-did it again today with only 3 new books, and it only took a few minutes from start to finish. So long as I continue to handle the transfer to library and then back to device consistently, going forward, it should be a fairly quick process to update collections using the Calibre plugin.
